In the frenzy of consumption over the last month, some people fret about the loss of a spiritual focus to the holidays. The presents, the rich foods and the decorations that pop up in stores just after Halloween are often deemed as non-spiritual trappings.

But scholar Dell deChant challenges the notion that the buying spree this time of year is a secular activity. In “The Sacred Santa: Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture,” he argues that the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve actually serves as the high holy days of the most widely practiced religion in the U.S.

Consumer culture is that religion, similar to the reverence of nature among some ancient peoples, only we worship the economy rather than the Earth. By making ritual sacrifices in our holy sites (think malls), we grow closer to a sacred power through the cycle of acquisition, consumption and disposal of goods. These shared sacrifices are what bind us together as a people across enormous ethnic and cultural diversity.

The strength of this religion lies in the fact that we practice it without conscious awareness; it is simply what we do. Consumption is not the unfortunate secularizing of Christmas, but rather a form of public piety in an entirely different religious system. To fail to participate in the exchange of goods during this season is to be out of touch, to be an infidel and a social outcast.

DeChant communicates no sense of dismay about this state of affairs. He finds in the religion of consumption a compelling explanation of human behavior in our culture.

For me, the concern with consumption is not its lack of religiosity, but rather the dark side of its spirituality.

Few other expressions of religious devotion have the equivalent of buyer’s remorse. In addition to the burden of personal debt and the depression that shows up with credit card bills in January, the desires created by the seasonal onslaught of “devotional materials,” such as commercials and catalogs, do not limit themselves to those who have the means to satisfy them.

Full access to consumer religion is determined by social class. Finally, the cost to the environment of continuous consumption and the labor practices necessary to ensure cheap and plentiful access to goods adds to the ethical dilemmas of participation in the religious fervor of the season.

This frenzy of economic activity has little to do with the Christian holiday of Christmas. The celebrations of this month have as much to do with the birth of Christ as that event had to do with the pagan celebration of winter solstice, to which it was long ago linked on the calendar.

Those who would defend the Christian nature of the holiday have theologized the practice of gift-giving, noting either that the wise men brought gifts to the baby Jesus or that we give gifts in honor of the gift of the savior that God gave us.

Many Christians have struggled to reclaim some of the Christian expression of the season by gift-giving to charities, or more recently by political activism to restore images of the birth of Christ to public spaces. But in the end, the gift-giving impulse of December seems to originate in an entirely different religious world than Christianity.

Beneath the consumption of the season are noble desires to express in tangible form the significance of relationships with those we love, the need to pause and celebrate in the midst of a culture of overwork and assisting those who are in need. All of these desires are important spiritual aspects of our lives, even if our means of expressing them serve the economy at the same time. Humans across cultures need moments for feasting and for celebrating relationships. The holiday season ritualizes these significant values through gift-giving.

But some are left wondering how to mark the birth of Christ without gift-giving. The prophet Zechariah believed that a savior would come “to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). As we face the ongoing turmoil in Iraq, children living in poverty and orphaned by AIDS and hundreds of other humanitarian crises here and abroad, we see the need for light and peace. Trying to meet these needs is harder to ritualize than giving gifts.

Responding to these realities is not the work of one day a year. So tomorrow, let’s participate wholeheartedly in the celebrations with those whom we love, finishing out the consumer holiday season. Then for the rest of the year, we can turn to the demanding work of bringing light to those in the shadow of death and having our feet guided into the ways of peace.

There is no rhyme or reason, and nothing that could pass for a justifiable goal or an ounce of sense, in the infliction of misery on the 800,000 federal employees either on furlough or working without pay.